Almost twenty five years have elapsed since the
debut of The Unknown Prophet by
Delbert W. Baker. The 160 page volume
ushered in a denominational enlightenment, as it were, about long-held notions concerning
William Ellis Foy, the first in the trio of prophetic candidates in the heat of
Millerism. Within that time Foy was
transformed from a stark corrective to those thinking about ignoring God’s
call, to a sterling exemplar of faithfulness amidst hostility. What led to The Unknown Prophet’s conception? How was it received by the
denomination? How did it upend engrained
assumptions? And finally, what has been its influence on Seventh-day Adventism
in the intervening decades?

Seventh-day
Adventists have historically held that God gave three individuals visions in
the early 1840s: William Foy, Hazen Foss, and Ellen Harmon. William Foy, a black Baptist minister then in
his 20s, rejected God’s command to share the visions, Adventists maintained, and
so God moved on to the white Hazen Foss.
Foss also declined God’s call to relate the visions he received, and
Foss was said to have never had peace again.
Finally, God settled on a teenaged girl named Ellen Harmon, who proved
to be a willing vessel.

The
main source from which the Foy-rejection belief seemed to have sprung is J.N.
Loughborough’s book Rise and Progress of
the Seventh-day Adventists.
Loughborough states that Foy was an educated Mulatto from Massachusetts
who was a Baptist minister soon to be ordained an Episcopal minister.[i] The Lord gave him three visions, and Foy spoke
on them wherever he was invited, donned in a clergyman’s robe. Recounting the themes of Foy’s visions, he writes
that “Having a good command of language, with fine descriptive powers, he [Foy]
created a sensation wherever he went.”[ii] Foy didn’t understand every part of his
visions, but he still related them, going as far as publishing them in a
pamphlet. But alas, Loughborough writes,
“He finally became exalted over the revelation, and thus lost his simplicity,
hence the manifestation of this gift to him ceased, and soon after he sickened
and died."[iii] From this account and the subsequent
reworking of it in numerous Adventist books, including the SDA Encyclopedia, and from the reasoning that if Foy had been
faithful then God wouldn’t have given the same visions to Hazen Foss and Ellen
White, Adventists concluded that William Foy rejected God’s prophetic call.

Delbert
W. Baker was a graduate student at Andrews University Seminary when he first
began to seriously question the negative things he had heard about William Foy.[iv] A third-generation Adventist, Baker had
earned a degree in Theology from Oakwood College. Nonplussed by the scant material on William
Foy, what he read raised more questions than answers.

Curious, in 1978 Baker began
to study Foy’s life in earnest. Although
a pastor in the Midwest, Baker took time to travel to various New England
locales, following in Foy’s footsteps.
In 1985 Baker became editor of Message
and completed his research shortly thereafter.
Reflecting on his quest to discover the truth about Foy, he writes: “I
have researched and analyzed all the known materials on Foy’s life. My search has led me to archives,
courthouses, libraries, and graveyards, to encounters with people in large
cities and in obscure, out-of-the-way places.
I visited places where Foy lived and worked throughout New England. My travels climaxed in Ellsworth, Maine,
where Foy’s tombstone is to this day.”[v] That tombstone, like many other revelations in
Baker’s book, would alter Adventist assumptions.

Several
articles preceded The Unknown Prophet’s
publication, readying the public, as it were, for what was to come. In 1985 Ronald Graybill, editor of the Columbia Union Visitor and former Ellen
G. White Estate research assistant, highlighted Delbert Baker’s completed
manuscript on William Foy in the February 15th issue in an article
entitled “William Ellis Foy: A Black Adventist Prophet Rediscovered.”[vi] In Spectrum’s
August 1987 issue Tim Poirier’s “Black Forerunner to Ellen White: William E.
Foy” summarized Baker’s research and included an interview with him on the
subject.[vii]
In the May 1, 1986, edition of Adventist
Review, the Church’s official organ, James Coffin, the magazine’s news
editor, did an upbeat write-up on Message
and featured the forthcoming book in the highlight box.[viii]

And
so in late 1987, The Unknown Prophet
was printed at Seventh-day Adventism’s premier press, Review and Herald, as
part of the 1888 Centennial Series, three books treating aspects of Adventist
history commemorating the legendary Minneapolis General Conference. The other two volumes are also now Adventist
classics: George Knight’s A.T. Jones:
From 1888 to Apostasy and Gary Land’s The
World of Ellen G. White.

The Unknown Prophet had an initial print
run of 5,000 copies. It was a handsome
book: a brown 6x9 with a thumbnail picture of a distinguished-looking black man
with a shock of gray hair sitting in a Victorian decorated office, feather pen
poised in hand, and The Unknown Prophet
written in large letters three lines long.
It was dedicated to “Calvin B. Rock and Oakwood College,” Baker’s alma
mater and president throughout his matriculation. Rock, then Vice President of the General
Conference, wrote one preface; the second was by the Secretary (Director) of
the Ellen G. White Estate, Robert W. Olsen.
Two more trustworthy men in Adventism could hardly have been chosen to
introduce the volume.

The Unknown Prophet is essentially a
biography of William Foy. Baker works
his five years of research into a flowing narrative of a conflicted light–skinned
black preacher of a bygone era into five sections: Context, Conversion,
Connections, Commission and Conclusion.

Context provides the
milieu of Foy’s life, which without one cannot understand the man. Baker provides impressive material on Foy’s
family and background, underscoring the unique struggle of free Northern blacks. In Section Two Foy is converted yet grapples
with a call to the ministry. Connections
has to do with Foy’s preaching career, first as a Baptist and Episcopalian
minister then as a Millerite. In Section
Four Baker spends a chapter on each of Foy’s four visions, respectively titling
them “Victory,” “Judgment,” “Providence,” and “Unknown.” The fourteenth chapter is the triumphant
centerpiece of the work, in which Foy’s internal struggle to relate the visions
he received in a racist and violent America turns to willingness and then
obedience.

The Unknown Prophet’s final section is a direct challenge to
Adventist’s long-held assumptions, covering old ground in a totally new way. Hazen Foss is reviewed in the light of Foy.
“The Baton is Passed” is a succinct three page chapter on Ellen White’s contact
with William Foy. Probably the strongest
evidence that Baker provided of Foy’s prophetic veracity were quotes and
exposition from an interview Dores Robinson had with Ellen G. White on October
13, 1906. In the interview a mature
White recalled that Foy had four visions, and at one time she actually
witnessed him in a prophetic trance. She
possessed the pamphlet Foy published of his visions, and had a discussion
(“interview”) with him. She and her
family attended his lectures at Beethoven Hall and Cape Elizabeth and she knew
where the Foys lived. Her most memorable
statement on Foy is: “But it was remarkable testimonies [that] he bore.”[ix]

Baker’s final chapter
compares the two prophets, contending that Foy was called to a different
ministry than White: his was “measured” and “brief”; hers “prolific” and “three
quarters of a century.” Yet they both
were faithful. Baker winds down by debunking
Loughborough’s aforementioned statement and one of Adventism’s inveterate
rumors, that soon after the Great Disappointment Foy died. His tombstone records his death date as
November 9, 1893. Baker concludes, “All
Adventists may join in the hope that one day, when heaven’s record is complete,
they will meet William Foy in Paradise, the earth made new, which meant so much
to him.”[x]

The
Review and Herald conducted an extensive marketing plan for the 1888 Centennial
Series, advertisements for the three books appearing consistently in Adventist
periodicals. Baker himself, still editor
of Message, traveled frequently,
preaching, promoting Message, and
lecturing on William Foy and other black Adventist history topics.

The Unknown Prophet sold well, so well in fact, that the Review and
Herald did a second print run of 3,100 copies in the spring of 1988 to meet
consumer demands. A flurry of articles
broadcasting the new book appeared. In
its second issue of 1988, the Adventist
Review displayed Foy’s tombstone on the cover, with a full length-article
by Baker inside.[xi] With solid backing from the highest church
leaders, Adventism’s official magazine, and Baker’s durable research, the tide
was turning, the true story of Foy making its way into the Adventist
consciousness.

Since Adventists are
people of the book, the extent of one’s research can probably best be measured
by the number and frequency of publications it is cited in. The
Unknown Prophet certainly fared well in this regard. In 1989, James Nix, founder of Adventist Heritage
Ministries, used The Unknown Prophet
as a source for his book Memorable Dates
From Our Adventist Past. Nix, once
perhaps trepid about lauding Foy as an Adventist hero as is evidenced in his
article in the Review and Herald
entitled “The Third Prophet Spoke Forth,” cites Foy’s first vision in January
18, 1842, as an important date in Adventism.[xii]

The Unknown Prophet’s influence is seen in SDA encyclopedias and
histories. Roger Coon, then associate
director of the White Estate, used Baker’s research in his popular The Great Visions of Ellen G. White.[xiii] George Knight, Adventism’s most prolific
author and scholar, and one of the authors in the 1888 Centennial Series, cites
Baker as Foy authority and relays his research to his readers in Millennial Fever and the End of the World.[xiv] Gary Land, Baker’s other fellow author in the
1888 Centennial Series, includes a positive entry on Foy in his Historical Dictionary of Seventh-day
Adventists.[xv] Richard
Schwarz and Floyd Greenleaf, prominent Adventist historians, cited The Unknown Prophet in the revised
edition of Light Bearers, but failed
to alter the text about Foy significantly.[xvi] The most recent authoritative study on Ellen
White, Messenger of the Lord by
Herbert E. Douglass, beloved SDA author and administrator, treats Foy fairly,
dedicating several paragraphs to him and confirming his faithfulness, relying
on The Unknown Prophet.[xvii] Denis Fortin, Dean of Andrews Theological
Seminary, asked Baker to contribute a Foy entry in his upcoming Ellen G. White Encyclopedia, co-edited
with Jerry Moon.[xviii]

A myriad of African
American authors, Adventist and non-Adventist, utilized Baker’s research. Dr. Charles Dudley, Adventist minister and
administrator of over 50 years, discusses Foy in his two volume history of
black Adventism, Thou Who Hast Brought Us.[xix]
R. Clifford Jones touches on Foy in the
first full-length biography of James K. Humphrey.[xx] Benjamin J. Baker considered William Foy’s
experience to be one of the critical episode in African American Seventh-day Adventist
history, and features a chapter on him in Crucial
Moments: Twelve Defining Events in Black Adventist History.[xxi] H.H. Price and Gerald E. Talbot mention Foy
in their book Maine’s Visible Black
History: The First Chronicle of Its People.[xxii]

A
myriad of other books and articles highlight William Foy, this time not as a
reprobate but as a spiritual hero.[xxiii] Foy is especially considered a hero in black
Adventism, a true pioneer chosen by God even before the revered Ellen G. White.[xxiv]

As
the Internet age began in the late 1990s, information on Foy began to appear on
the World Wide Web. Soon The Unknown Prophet could be found for
sale on dozens of online book stores.
Naturally, websites sprung up that went to extremes. Baker’s book developed a sort of cult
following, often cited to disprove Ellen White, maintaining she shamelessly
appropriated Foy’s visionary content.[xxv] Other sites, appreciating the spiritual
richness of Foy’s revelations, reproduced his pamphlet with no apparent
polemical agenda.[xxvi]

In the first decade of the 21st
century perhaps the greatest nods to Baker’s scholarship occurred. In 2002 The General Conference Youth
Department published a Church Heritage Manual, “A course in
Church History highlighting significant details of interest to the youth of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church.” In the
traditional Adventist practice, a section on the spirit of prophecy was
included with the requisite Revelation 12:17 and 19:10 as signs of the true
remnant church. But instead of starting
off with Ellen White, William Foy is first featured. The account sticks to the facts and never
reports an ill word about Foy. The Unknown Prophet is the source.[xxvii]

In 2005 the Center for Adventist Research at Andrews
University republished William Foy’s Christian
Experience. The pamphlet was
originally published in 1845 by J. and C.H. Pearson, two brothers residing in
Portland, Maine, who believed in Foy’s ministry. On the 160th
anniversary, it appeared again in the Heritage Treasures Series, the first in
the set with an introduction by Baker.”[xxviii]

Misinformation
on Foy still lingers, however, despite the decades since The Unknown Prophet, although not in any Seventh-day Adventist
magazine in good and regular standing. The
January 2008 edition of Our Firm
Foundation (OFF) had this to say
about Foy in an article entitled “Jonah: A Type of Remnant”: “Like some who, in
the early days of Adventism, were bidden to give a message but who ran from
God’s call, there is a price for disobedience.
We think of William Foss [sic] and Hazen Foy [sic], both given a vision
to relate to God’s people; both ran from the call. Neither had peace again. Instead, the call was given to the weakest of
the weak, Ellen Harmon, who tremblingly accepted.”[xxix] When this author wrote OFF concerning the Foy reference, the editor cited J.N.
Loughborough’s Rise and Progress of the
Seventh-day Adventists as proof of the validity of the Foy statement.[xxx] And the occasional sermon from an Adventist
pulpit contains a woebegone aside about the tragedy that was Foy’s
disobedience.

But
despite the truth about William Foy coming to light, more questions about the
now-known prophethave yet to be
explored: Do the divine choices of prophets in the 1840s reveal anything new
about the manner the gift may appear in the future? What does the fact that Foy never became a
Seventh-day Adventist tell us? Has the
revised knowledge of Foy had any affect on SDA race relations? How should Foy’s experienced be used in
Adventism today? Finally, what other
parts of SDA history need revising?